[Durham INC] A note of thanks; health of urban creeks

[John Schelp]

Dear Mr. Bonfield,

Thank you very much for this detailed response. One of the wonderful things about Durham is to see the City Manager post a seven-page memo to answer questions that have come up on a community listserv.

It's good to see senior leadership taking these matters seriously.  

Much of the report – even the
 section on stormwater – focuses on sewers. While sewer maintenance is of
 critical import, it would be helpful to know more about what the City is doing about actual stormwater. Regular street-cleaning, daylighting of
 streams, preventing automotive shops from dumping illegally, mandating vegetated buffers from all urban streams to protect them from development, enforcing anti-erosion and sedimentation requirements against road crews... all will help reduce the actual impacts from stormwater, such as stream-bank scouring from high-velocity runoff during rainfall, and deposition of nasty material in the urban streams.  

Can you please ask your colleagues to list reports/testing of the actual state of water quality in urban streams (e.g., what are the BOD levels? Fecal coliform counts? Status of benthic organisms)?

Also, back to sewer issues, how many employees are currently trained to monitor for leaks? When the biggest sewage spill in the state in 2000 went undetected for nine days, we were told the City only had one monitor and he had been out sick (see
 below).

The City is to be commended for the proactive measures the Stormwater office is making (e.g., doing back-yard assessments and helping city residents plant rain gardens). These measures not only help water quality, they make people’s yards more attractive and the community benefits. 

It's clear the City has been working hard on these issues. However, urban streams still need help. Sharing information about assessments, and then inviting additional ideas from the community, would be a productive next step.

With thanks for all you do,

Michelle Nowlin & John Schelp


Letter: Water Protection Needs Higher Durham Priority
Herald-Sun, 15 December 2000

South Ellerbe Creek flows for three miles through some
of Durham's oldest and most densely
 developed
neighborhoods (Old West Durham, Walltown, Trinity Park
and Northgate Park).

It is home to wild
 rose
 and blackberry
 bushes, wild
pear trees, cat tails, thrush grasses and other
wetland plants, large bullfrogs, rabbits, racoon and
several varieties of birds -- including red tail hawks
and great blue herons.

After crossing under Northgate Mall's massive surface
parking lots and Interstate 85, South Ellerbe flows
into what was a greenbelt of forests and farms that 
separated Durham from Braggtown. It was here, on 
Thanksgiving Day, that an old 18" terra-cotta pipe
burst, spilling 4.5 million gallons of raw sewage into
the creek for a period nine days -- the biggest sewage
spill in the state.

Once detected, the City of Durham responded to the
spill quickly and capably. However, the City of Durham
must take responsibility for the slow detection of
this spill of raw sewage into South Ellerbe Creek and
the Neuse River system. The City uses automatic
monitoring devices in the wastewater pipes to detect
spills.
 But the one person in charge of monitoring the
computer readings was out sick, so the spill went
unnoticed.

Durham must give a higher priority to protecting our
public trust waters by giving more attention to this
very important duty. The first step could be training
existing employees as back up operators and making the
readings public so that more people could monitor for
leaks. The City is permitted to discharge treated
water into the creek. For this privilege, it must show
respect for the community and the natural environment
and take responsibility for protecting the creek from
such disasters.

We also ask that the risk of spills be minimized by
placing a priority on prevention. Inspecting
wastewater pipes with more frequency, and replacing
the old terra cotta pipes that are likely to crack
over time with more durable piping, should be at the
top of the list. The spill on South Ellerbe
 Creek
could have been prevented by a system to detect and
replace high risk pipes. Durham should be commended
for having already mapped its wastewater system, and
should be able to use these maps to locate pipes that
are compromised such as the pipe on South Ellerbe Creek.

Urban creeks are the most neglected and degraded
creeks in the nation -- polluted, channelized,
littered, and forgotten. Yet, these streams contribute
to drinking water for urban communities, and also
provide recreation and refuge from concrete and
asphalt. Restored rivers help make cities livable
again, offer many urban residents a significant
connection to nature, and provide enormous benefits
for public health, recreation, economic growth, and
community pride.

The Friends of South Ellerbe Creek and the Neuse River
Foundation ask the City of Durham to take appropriate
measures to protect our waterways by investing
 the
necessary resources to prevent such disasters in the
future.

Michelle Nowlin, Friends of South Ellerbe Creek
and
Heather Beard, Neuse River Foundation 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://rtpnet.org/pipermail/inc-list/attachments/20130111/c18e2bd6/attachment.html>